Let me tell you a story about a company that for years, made timing devices for military purposes. Such as bombs and you know what, they were quite successful. But after World War II however, which is the late 1940s, the market for timing devices slowed down dramatically. Which I'm sure is a good thing or was a good thing. In fact, orders nearly came to a halt, faced with this dilemma, the CEO of this company came up with a crazy idea. And the idea was to use their expertise, their competence to make watches, actually, wristwatches in particular. And so was born the Timex company, yeah that's how Timex started. Timex knew they faced really formidable competitors, so they came up with an entirely new way, to play the game to compete. Rather than rely on classical levers and movements, they designed a mechanical watch. Rather than rely on skilled craftsmen, they mass produced their watches. Rather than rely on word of mouth and reputation, they mass advertise their watches. I don't know maybe some of, you may remember the jingle of of Timex and they had these commercials, I'm talking about mass advertising. I remember as a kid seeing some of these commercials on tv and they show there's this one that's kind of crazy thing. There's this guy who's waterskiing, and he has a Timex watch strapped onto his ankle. I'm not quite sure that's the most logical place to put it if you're water skiing but, it was a commercial. And he's water skiing and he's smiling, but as he's coming near the dock, he stumbles and rolls over in the water. And he looks like he's injured and they bring him out of the water, and then they even have a stretcher that comes to pick him up, right on the dock. And it's a commercial, so he magically lifts up his leg with the ski that's partially broken. And he's smiling, and it shows the wristwatch still on, on his ankle. And he says, takes a licking, and keeps on ticking I mean, that's craziness, right? But that's what they did, and as the advertising of Timex did, and it was a mega success. Let's keep going on how they broke the rules, rather than market watches at special occasion products. They promoted the idea that you can have several watches for different purposes. A watch for for work, a watch for the weekend, a watch to go out to a fancy show or a big dinner or the opera or what have you. So you didn't need one watch, you needed three or four watches. And to top it all off rather than offer the watches at a premium price, which is what they were they sold those watches for 10 bucks for $10. I mean, can you imagine that? There's one more part, what was the traditional distribution channel for watches? Where did you go to buy watches, if you said jewelers you were right. And so of course Timex went to the jewelers, they showed them they're beautiful $10 watches. And the jeweler said, absolutely not, we will not carry this, and why not, why do you think the jewelers didn't? Well let's see, how do jewelers make most of their money anyway? They make their money from repairs, now it's true that, jewelers if you thought jewelers didn't want to carry Timex watches. Because they were a low price point, they wouldn't make as much money. It would take away from the prestige of the store or something like that, or it wasn't consistent with brand. Those are true, that's part of the story, but the biggest part of the story was that, jewelers made most of their money from repairs. Almost like automobile dealerships make money from service more than they make from selling cars. And the problem with the Timex watches is if they didn't work, you just throw it away, you didn't bother repairing it. And the other thing is those watches because of that simple mechanical technology, they hardly ever needed repairs. So the jeweler said, forget about that I mean, imagine a product no one wants to carry because it doesn't break down enough kind of interesting. So okay, that's what Timex did, that's their strategy, they grew into a pretty sizable business. They were generating hundreds of millions of dollars, year after year in cash flow. But who dominated the global wristwatch industry before Timex showed up? Of course they were the giant Swiss mostly Swiss, some French, watch manufacturers and Rolex and all the rest. And what did you think the Swiss said, when they saw Timex, and their new strategy? Well, they didn't think much of it, right, because this is, as I said before, from the jewelers point of view, lower price point. Lower brand, not prestigious, not made the right way, all of which is true, except that they were generating all this money. They created a successful business out of i, by not acknowledging that there might be another way to do things. But accepting and in fact never questioning, the company let's call them idols that dominated their thinking. The Swiss gave up hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of dollars in revenues over, a long period of time. Eventually the Swiss did react, didn't they? And you know what it was, the Swatch, but what is a Swatch, simple watches, mass produced, mass advertised, mass distributed. They're sold in stores all over the place, it is almost the Timex strategy some 30 years later. So, let's take the Timex example as a good way to consider what those idols might be. Idols are things we've always believed to be true, but actually they might not be. They might actually be holding us back from new opportunities. Or they may still be reasonable, but no one has questioned them or debated them, for years. And the process of such questioning, could be very helpful for thinking about strategy. I sometimes also used the word recipe to describe the same idea, right? You have a recipe for making something and, some people stick to that recipe. They don't make any adjustments because, that recipe works and they've made a great casserole. Or they made a great pie or whatever it happens to be. But there's a risk associated with that because, every element of that recipe, these idols that we all believe in. Sometimes they could start to become, I don't know less important, they could start to depreciate. They could be less relevant because the world again changes around us, and those idols are things we don't often talk about. I think it's really really important in the next application exercise, I'll give you a chance to apply the lessons from Timex to yourself. And in particular, to think about what are some of those idols. Some of those things you think, have always been true that, maybe we should start to question, we should start to think about. very important discipline to have in the theme around change and changing yourself.
